3GP to TS Converter

3GP to TS — Transport Stream or MP4?

Almost nobody wants a .ts file for its own sake. You want one because a packager, an IPTV headend, a broadcast chain or a set-top box asked for a transport stream, and a 3GP clip off an old phone is what you have. Short answer: if something downstream specifically ingests .ts, convert here; if you just want the clip to play on modern devices, 3GP to MP4 carries the same H.264 video with less overhead and far broader support. The comparison below is the honest version of that decision.

Side-by-side: TS vs MP4

When to Pick TS

• An HLS packager ingests .ts segments and you need source material in that container.
• The target is an IPTV or broadcast chain — DVB, ATSC and ISDB all carry transport streams by definition.
• A set-top box or hardware decoder rejects MP4 but plays .ts from a USB stick or a network share.
• The delivery path is lossy and you want the resynchronisation behaviour that fixed-size packets give a decoder.

When MP4 Is the Right Target

• The file has to play on a phone, in a browser or on a smart TV without extra software.
• You plan to edit it — most editors handle MP4 more predictably than a raw transport stream.
• You care about size: every 188-byte packet carries a 4-byte header, which is roughly 2% overhead before program tables and padding are counted.
• You are archiving rather than transmitting; the error resilience buys nothing on a healthy disk.

How to Convert 3GP to TS

1. Upload Your 3GP File: Drag and drop the .3gp (or .3g2) clip onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Several clips can be queued and they run with the same settings.
2. Confirm Video Codec and Audio Codec: Video Codec defaults to H.264, with H.265, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, Xvid and DivX also selectable. Audio Codec defaults to AAC, with AC-3, E-AC-3, DTS, MP2 and MP3 available for broadcast-style chains.
3. Choose a File Compression Mode, Resolution and Trim: The Quality Preset dropdown starts on "Very High (Recommended)"; Constant Quality exposes the H.264 CRF slider (16-51, preset 23), and Constant Bitrate or Variable Bitrate let you name Mbit/s figures. Leave Video resolution on "Keep original", and use Trim with Time Range to encode only part of the clip.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .ts. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later. No sign-up, no watermark.

Codec Choices Inside the Transport Stream

On the audio side, AAC is the default and the right answer for HLS; AC-3 and E-AC-3 are the broadcast pairings, and MP2 is what older DVB chains expect. Whatever the source held — AMR narrowband speech in most phone recordings — is re-encoded into the codec you pick.

Frequently Asked Questions

What video and audio codecs does the output actually use?

H.264 video with AAC audio unless you change them, which is the combination HLS and modern transport-stream players handle most reliably. The Video Codec and Audio Codec dropdowns let you switch to MPEG-2 with MP2 for a broadcast-legacy chain, or H.265 with AAC where the hardware supports it.

Can I hand this .ts file straight to an HLS server?

Not by itself. A single .ts is a valid transport stream, but HLS delivery also needs the content split into short segments with an .m3u8 playlist describing them. RFC 8216 — the HLS specification, published August 2017 — lists MPEG-2 transport streams and fragmented MP4 among the permitted media segment formats, so modern packagers may want fMP4 instead. This converter produces the stream; your packaging tool does the segmenting.

Why is the TS file larger than an MP4 of the same clip?

Packet overhead. A transport stream is chopped into fixed 188-byte packets, each carrying a 4-byte header — about 2% of the file before you count the program association and program map tables that repeat throughout the stream, plus any null-packet padding. MP4 stores one index for the whole file, so it spends far less on structure. The extra bytes buy the error resilience broadcast needs.

What can play a .ts file on my computer?

VLC and mpv open transport streams on Windows, macOS and Linux without extra setup, and most media-server software (Plex, Jellyfin) handles them. Browsers and the default phone players generally will not — if that is what you need, convert to MP4, either from the original 3GP or afterwards with TS to MP4.

Will converting 3GP to TS improve the video?

No. This is a re-encode of a recording made at low resolution and low bitrate for a 3G network, so the realistic best case is "no visible change" and the realistic worst case is a little generation loss. Keeping Quality Preset on "Very High (Recommended)" and Video resolution on "Keep original" keeps that loss as small as it can be.

What happens to the AMR audio from the phone?

It is re-encoded into whichever codec you select, AAC by default. AMR narrowband is a speech codec that captured only the voice band at 8 kHz, so the re-encode makes the track decodable by transport-stream players but cannot widen what was recorded. If the source used AAC, it is still re-encoded rather than copied across.

What does the Constant Quality slider do here?

With H.264 selected it exposes the CRF scale, 0 to 51 with 23 preset — lower numbers mean higher quality and larger files, and around 18 is generally treated as visually lossless. Switching Video Codec to MPEG-2 or the MPEG-4 family changes the control to that family's quantiser scale of 1-31 instead, where lower is again better.

Can I extract just a section of the clip?

Yes. Set Trim to Time Range and give a start point and duration. The encoder only processes that span, which is quicker than converting the whole clip and cutting the transport stream afterwards.

Does the converter accept .3g2 files?

Yes. .3g2 is the 3GPP2 variant recorded by CDMA-network handsets, built on the same ISO base media container as .3gp, and every option on this page applies to it identically.

How are my uploads handled?

Your file travels over an encrypted connection, is processed on our servers, and is deleted automatically a few hours later. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public.